{"id":93083,"date":"2025-04-17T02:00:37","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T06:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=93083"},"modified":"2024-12-20T17:26:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T22:26:51","slug":"why-tog-ii-was-better-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/04\/17\/why-tog-ii-was-better-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Why TOG II was BETTER Than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VfhzhPJAw6g?si=eqA1oClmYzVJ4MI_\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Tank Museum<\/strong><br \/>\nPublished 20 Dec 2024<\/p>\n<p>It was rejected and ridiculed for years &mdash; but TOG II is actually much better than you think.<\/p>\n<p>In 1939, the UK Ministry of War issued the spec for a heavy assault tank. This hefty brief included the requirements to cross a 16ft gap, climb over anti-tank obstacles and enough firepower to penetrate 7 inches of concrete. Enter &#8220;The Old Gang&#8221;, a group of expert engineers, responsible for most of the tanks created during the First World War.<\/p>\n<p>Two vehicles were created during this process &mdash; TOG I and TOG II. While the TOG projects have often been rejected as tanks out of time &mdash; relics of thinking from trench warfare &mdash; Content and Research Officer, Chris Copson, argues that these vehicles were highly innovative in terms of their mobility, armour and firepower.<\/p>\n<p>Despite fulfilling their brief, TOG was sidelined in favour of other projects, and the lone survivor &mdash; TOG II &mdash; arrived at The Tank Museum in the 1950s. This lumbering beast that never saw active service, sat sidelined whilst surrounded by WW2 legends like the Churchill, Sherman, and the infamous Tiger 131.<\/p>\n<p>But in 2012, a miracle happened. <em>World of Tanks<\/em> included the super heavy tank in their online video game &mdash; launching TOG II into viral popularity. Since then, interest in this unique vehicle has skyrocketed, and now more than ever people want to see TOG II in real life and find out more about its interesting history.<\/p>\n<p>Shop TOG II merch at our online shop: <a href=\"https:\/\/tankmuseumshop.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/tankmuseumshop.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>00:00 | Introduction<br \/>\n01:24 | An Innovative Spec<br \/>\n05:00 | Innovations in Mobility<br \/>\n10:11 | Innovations in Armour<br \/>\n11:49 | Innovations in Firepower<br \/>\n16:21 | Would TOG II Have Worked?<br \/>\n18:46 | The Legend Lives On<\/p>\n<p>In this film, Chris Copson unpicks the misconceptions surrounding TOG II &mdash; that it was a ridiculous super-heavy tank built for a war from 30 years ago. Instead, this is a vehicle that was highly innovative and represented a significant engineering achievement. Thanks to videos games such as <em>World of Tanks<\/em>, TOG II is now celebrated as the goofiest super heavy tank in history, and lives on as an internet legend for a whole new generation of tank nuts.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Want to learn more about TOG II? Here are some of the sources we used to make this film:<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Hills, <em>The Tanks of TOG: The work of the Special Vehicle Development Committee in World War II<\/em>, (2017)<br \/>\nDavid Fletcher, <em>British Battle Tanks: British-Made Tanks of World War II<\/em> (Osprey, 2017)<br \/>\nTM Archive, E2013.5165 &#8220;Short History of the Development of the &#8216;TOG&#8217; Series of Heavy Tanks Under the Direction of the Special Vehicle Design Committee (SVDC) of the Ministry of Supply&#8221;<br \/>\nTM Archive, E2013.5149 &#8220;TOG 2* &#8211; Driving &#038; Operating Instructions&#8221;<br \/>\nTM Archive, E2013.5159 &#8220;The TOG Series&#8221;<br \/>\nTM Archive, E2013.5211 &#8220;Electric Transmission and Final Drive&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gameplay footage courtesy of <em>World of Tanks<\/em><br \/>\nArchive material courtesy of British Pathe<\/p>\n<p>Support The Tank Museum!<br \/>\n    Friends: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/redirect?event=video_description&#038;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbmo2eVFhekRsekxEVXpDWldlT2JTclJ2Zk8xZ3xBQ3Jtc0ttM1hSVl8wZUZzcFdNd1MyNlNQSm9ETVpkVHoyTkVrRkQtV0VPNzZyZGppaVBaX1RlYmU2ek0xRm9kMDF1UVVsb3B1TS1vdjdITnlvSWVyREVVM3dkWHVWa3dPNmdKZzBFVkN3RTQ3d1dYRUxkdjZoTQ&#038;q=https%3A%2F%2Ftankmuseum.org%2Fsupport-us%2Ffriends-of-the-tank-museum&#038;v=VfhzhPJAw6g\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/tankmuseum.org\/support-us\/fri&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n    Online Shop: <a href=\"https:\/\/tankmuseumshop.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/tankmuseumshop.org\/<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Tank Museum Published 20 Dec 2024 It was rejected and ridiculed for years &mdash; but TOG II is actually much better than you think. In 1939, the UK Ministry of War issued the spec for a heavy assault tank. This hefty brief included the requirements to cross a 16ft gap, climb over anti-tank obstacles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,5,663,230],"tags":[991,347,140,174,1298,623],"class_list":["post-93083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-military","category-weapons","category-ww2","tag-afvs","tag-debunking","tag-design","tag-innovation","tag-museum","tag-wargames"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-odl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93084,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93083\/revisions\/93084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}